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+4 Informative? Should be -1 Troll or perhaps funny. Children who grow up in a wealthy household and neighborhood are more likely to have access to better schools and technology. A school's budgets is mostly determined by the local area's property tax income (google: "how schools are funded in {state}"), ergo wealthy neighborhoods usually means a good school, and its pretty obvious why wealthy kids have access to technology--that shit costs money. GP makes a perfectly valid point and your ignorant little joke about correlation and causation takes away from the terrible reality of the US education system. If it was politics, I would let your comment slide, but education hits too close to home. Our system of education favors the rich and the white, and that is a fact. (PS: I grew up in an upper-middle class neighborhood, and I'm as white as the driven snow).

To sum up, wealthy family / neighborhood --> wealthy school --> better education (higher literacy rate). Wealthy family --> technology (gadgets, computers, etc) --> increased literacy? Maybe. I agree with TFA about how technology might increase literacy, but the study is scientifically bogus and won't lead anyone to any true conclusions. My guess is that good (read: wealthy) schools can afford to use more technology than bad (poor) schools, and this use of tech is just one small factor in the increased literacy of wealthy schools over poor schools.

Read this: Let America Be America Again

Tell that to Emily Dickinson! Or we could give him the benefit of the doubt and construe "be" as a subjunctive. But I think the most likely explanation is that he typed the sentence so fast that the word "to" got left out.

There is a fourth path: to live the Dreamtime.

To cleave to the self-evident; that all humans are politically equal, and endowed by that which they perceive as the creative with inalienable rights...

This walkabout declines to wax hyperbolic, believing it would be preaching to the choir, but liberty and justice (including due process of law) to all goes one hell of a long way down a proper path to peace, while depriving humans of the benefits of Trial by Jury, and transporting them beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences, can only lead to violent reactions. Tis as true today as was true two hundred thirty years hence.

Ironic that the madman past and present are both Georges though. Incongruously, archaic Vegas casino worker slang defines a george as someone who tips exceedingly well.

btw, a wink and a nod for the passé handling of the Jeffers riff; a mite unexpected on \. Jeffers mentioned Carthage at least once in his work, but I felt the cite given was more appropriate. Also, since i suspect you've been to the site currently referenced as this user's, I offer many of its inner anchors, suitable for direct linking of citations, as well as a current project, nearing completion: Authorization of Force.

Who the hell is noone anyway?

noone is anyone's lover:

anyone lived in a pretty how town
.
.
.

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

--ee cumings (http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings/118 80)

"That's okay, I see 'alot' a lot."

I see it alot too. In fact, I see it so often that at this point, I treat it as a valid compound word. This, of course, makes me a bad person and probably a comunist or terrorist or the like, but I tend to read, write and speak colloquial English as it is presented to me, not what the OED has pre-approved. I prefer a living, breathing language to bookworm-food.

If you know what the word means from context or repeated usage, why bother "correcting"? Next thing, you're going to go tell e.e. cummings that it's spelled "I" ;-)

The next 50 years are going to be really hard for those who cling to the idea that written languages are defined by an elite who are "published".

Oh and speaking of Linus as author (or not) of Linux: as I understand it he wrote his name incorrectly on a paper for school, and the got caught up in a Three's Company style cycle of crumbling lies about the existance of this "Linux" until eventually he had to hire SCO to write it for him....

This is link to the poem I meant to post. Oops.

I have the right to refuse to contribute to their campaign...

(1) A well-established system of matching funds already exists within the electoral system. Any party-based candidate who qualifies, including that Klansman, Communist, or Nazi, can have their campaign funded in part by your tax dollars.

(2) More generally, you have no power to control how or on what your taxes are spent. (Other than the occasional referendum and, indirectly, by electing representatives who reflect your values.) I not only disagree with, but find morally repugnant, some of the U.S.'s current big-stick approaches to foreign policy. But this gives me no right to withhold my taxes from those efforts. (Although some have tried in the past...)

(3) Limit the powers of the government and someone else steps in to fill that power vacuum. Guess who? Big business and those special interest groups you mentioned. Unless you're in a Capra movie, in which case Jimmy Stewart will step up to bat.

Wasn't legal then either. Thoreau got tossed in jail for non-payment of taxes and sat there for a while with every intention of using the incident to publice his views on civil disobedience. Then someone paid his taxes for him, and they booted him out of jail. Slightly more info here.